Swept Away, I Became One Of Them (2)

I changed out of the outfit that drew too much attention as I went around the capital and put on new clothes.

Only then did I feel people’s gazes recede, and as I wandered here and there gathering information, I learned that we were not yet being overwhelmingly pushed back by the Demon God.

It turned out the current Hero Summoning was, in a sense, preventive—every time the magic refilled, they summoned heroes to train them and prepare.

In short, I had been swept up in their attempt to build a reserve force.

There was no misfortune like this. Still, I couldn’t say I hated everything about the situation. My life back home had already been a busted run.

In three years as a salaryman, I had been on the verge of going into debt rather than saving money.

To be honest, I remembered someone always saying, as if it were a mantra, that “if you don’t have debt in this life, you’re successful.” Could such a life really be called successful?

In the end, I decided it was just the gripe of someone whose life had gone off the rails. I, too, had been swept along by that current, putting in only the bare minimum effort to keep my quality of life while scraping by day to day.

But here, I believed that with only such minimal effort, the only outcome waiting for me was the worst-case scenario: “confirmed slavery.”

They said that if a sturdy man became a slave, he would usually be sent to the battlefield rather than made a sex slave, so avoiding such a wretched fate was the only right choice.

“Do I have nineteen gold coins and ninety-eight silver coins left?”

One gold coin equaled one hundred silver. And one silver equaled one thousand copper. Instead, copper coins existed in 1, 10, 50, 100, and 500 denominations, and there were also 10-silver coins.

There was also a “large gold coin,” worth one hundred gold, about half a palm in size; seeing as nobles mostly used it as a huge sum, regular gold coins seemed to be money that commoners could handle without much trouble.

“They say you can hold out for years at most, but that assumes you already have housing and a job to maintain a minimal life. If I have to secure lodging and keep a decent quality of life, twenty gold coins will surely run out within about half a year.”

That was the judgment I reached. Moreover, this world had no banking system, so they said I had to be careful about storing gold.

If I ran into a pickpocket or a robber, I might even lose my life, so I had no choice but to be cautious.

“They said you can buy a slave, but the minimum price was five gold. And that’s for a regular, ordinary slave…”

For a slave who could fight or was highly skilled, twenty gold wouldn’t even come close.

“The best method is… mercenaries?”

But they also said mercenaries might turn into bandits at any moment, so I felt nothing but growing distrust toward this world.

At least the highways were well maintained, making travel between villages convenient, and soldiers patrolled them, which made things fairly safe—something I appreciated.

“Settling in the capital might be the most convenient, but I never know when or how I might get dragged off…”

They said that, at times, people brought from other worlds were forcibly taken into the royal castle so that mages or researchers could exploit their knowledge.

Knowledge from another world could be a great weapon—that was the point. It was an experience I did not want. So I decided to keep a reasonable distance from the capital.

And as someone swept along by fate, I didn’t want an ending where I was used and then discarded.

So I chose to board a carriage headed for another region. The place I was recommended—relatively safe, far from the front, and populous—was a port city famous as “Benea.”

Traveling by carriage would take roughly a week. It was quite a long journey, but I heard from the coachman that the trip would be fairly safe and comfortable, with no threatening monsters or inland-raiding demons to encounter along the way.

“The fare is two hundred silver. The coachman provides room and board, right?”

They also said they would hire three mercenaries from three different mercenary guilds to guard against mishaps. The reason for not hiring everyone from the same guild was to reduce the chance of them all turning into bandits together—another useful lesson.

The carriage was two-storied and quite large. It wasn’t pulled by “horses” but by a massive brute about three meters tall, resembling an ox. At full tilt, it could reach forty kilometers per hour, apparently.

It was such an interesting creature that I once approached it out of curiosity, and I remembered what the female mercenary near the coachman’s seat said as she stopped me.

“Yanukeu is extremely rough; if a stranger gets close, it’ll trample you.”

That was information that made me flinch, and because she clutched her stomach laughing at my startled retreat, I couldn’t be sure how serious she’d been.

On the first day of travel, the sky I looked up at while we camped was so clear, transparent, and beautiful it was almost frightening.

It felt like stars were pouring down. The starlight and moonlight made my eyes sting, and I think I spent the whole night just staring at the sky.

Thanks to that, I felt miserable the whole next day, but it was, in its own way, my way of enjoying this new world.

On the second day, we encountered monsters—something they said we were unlikely to run into.

“A pack of goblins—eleven. I’ll take five. You two, keep the passengers safe and engage as needed.”

Mercenaries had ranks, and the highest-ranked one on this Benea-bound trip served as captain and gave the order.

I watched as the female mercenary who had teased me and a sly-looking spearman closed in on the goblins and cut them down with ridiculous ease.

Though their skin color and features differed, they looked human-like enough that I couldn’t easily adapt to the sight of a living being’s limbs being severed and dying in vain.

Nausea knocked at the base of my throat, but I barely pressed it down and looked at the “butchered” goblin. Seeing the mercenaries slice off the goblins’ ears and pocket them, I was once again forced to recognize that this truly was another world.

I didn’t feel good, but others seemed to find the goblin slaughter rather delightful. There were eleven passengers including me, and everyone cheered and showered the mercenaries with praise—leaving me feeling out of place.

Then my eyes met the female mercenary’s. She cocked her head in a curious way, and I hurriedly averted my gaze.

I didn’t know why, but I found myself looking away.

Honestly, I didn’t think I could ever get used to life dying right before my eyes. Maybe that was why my talent was Pharmacy.

Thus the second day ended, night fell as expected, but the cascade of starlight I had seen the night before no longer caught my eye.

I kept recalling the daytime carnage.

“Is this post-traumatic stress?”

Maybe not—but maybe. I was just toying with the thought, wishing I had a tranquilizer, when it happened.

A thought surfaced in my mind: a recipe for brewing a “Nerve-Calming Potion.”

‘…What is this?’

It felt unfamiliar. Yet if I had the ingredients, I felt I could make it. At that moment, a strange fragrance reached me, and I raised my upper body from where I lay and turned my head. When my gaze met the female mercenary’s again, she asked,

“Bathroom?”

“Ah, I just caught a strange smell…”

“Smell?”

Puzzled, she seemed unable to catch this rich scent.

Drawn by the odd fragrance that seemed to lure people in, I had no choice but to get up. I followed the smell toward some nearby brush, and the mercenary woman came after me, saying,

“It’s dangerous. The wild at night is perfect for ambushes. You’ll end up with your nape torn out and die to something like those goblins from earlier.”

She spoke frightening words without hesitation, but more than her warning, I was overwhelmed by the scent filling my sinuses.

“It’ll only take a moment—could you help me?”

Her look was displeased, but she slowly nodded. I thanked her, took a few steps following the smell, and then I saw something curious.

What looked like ordinary grass was emitting a gentle glow.

‘What is… this?’

I stared, fascinated, while the mercenary woman beside me just glanced around as if unmoved.

‘Am I the only one who can see this?’

Thinking that might be the case, I bent down to grab the glowing herb—and then it happened.

From how to dig it up to how to store it, detailed knowledge surfaced in my mind. I let go of the stem I’d grabbed and slowly brushed away the surrounding soil.

Then, carefully lifting it so I wouldn’t damage the roots, I drew it out. The mercenary woman looked at me in surprise.

“Are you someone who makes medicine?”

She at least recognized it as a medicinal herb. Wondering how to answer, I nodded.

“That’s right. I’m a pharmacist.”

With a slightly astonished look, she examined what I held.

“What herb is that?”

At her question, information about the herb came to me.

“It’s called anjeongcho—‘Calm Herb.’ It has the effect of soothing a startled heart. You can make various kinds of medicine with it.”

I recited exactly what surfaced, and she looked at me, a little surprised.

“I’ve heard of it—a herb like that. I didn’t know it grew near the main road like this.”

“Is that so…?”

For now, I said nothing more, held it in my hand, and looked around. To make a Nerve-Calming Potion, I needed other herbs besides Calm Herb.

Interestingly, when I thought of a particular herb, I could smell a different scent. Maybe because of that—

I spoke to the mercenary woman.

“If you help me, I’ll share a little of the medicine I make. What do you think?”

She didn’t even hesitate.

“Then instead of some weird potion, could you make a wound-healing medicine? In our line of work, fast recovery from injuries is the best.”

At her words, I considered the recipe that surfaced in my head and nodded. The wound-healing medicine’s recipe wasn’t that complicated.

I did need tools to make it, though—you couldn’t simply pound herbs to get it done. That part bothered me a little.

Even so, since gathering ingredients came first, the mercenary woman and I wandered for about thirty minutes and managed to harvest an armful of herbs—quite the feat.

“If I’d known there were this many herbs growing everywhere, I’d have gone around foraging long ago…”

She joked, the mercenary woman.